Coaching today revealed that the "what will they think (of me)"-fear inhibits me. I am held back in asking about the status of that funding of which I thought was supposed to be mine, but they didn't explicitly say so. I am held back in asking other people (non-academia) if I can come and chat with them. I am simply not clear, and just vague. I know now since yesterday my RA asked if I was interested in a small job of 0,2 FTE for when my contract ended. While of course, I thought everybody knew?! RA was surprised I was... which was a surprise to me.
Combining that question with todays new knowledge:
I am held back a lot in being me just by the fact that I think all the time about what people might think.
I should not laugh loud, people might think I am irritating or full of myself. I should not ask questions, people might think I am stupid. I should work out things alone, people surely think I can do that alone by now. I should not bother this other prof about helping me with the statistics of the project, he might think I am annoying. By not doing a lot of things, I might even invoke this thinking of others, since I am simply not clear. Combining my vagueness with university vagueness, things are really misty here. I thought they knew I wanted to stay, and because they didn't offer me anything, I was opting another career. While I do not know anything for sure, I just assume. Perhaps they are waiting for me to ask things. I know that I need to ask, people tell me to ask, even here on the blog, I feel that I need to ask, but apparently I needed to understand the mechanism that is holding me back before being able to take that step.
Next step is recognizing that, acknowledging it, and ignoring it.
asking definitely does not make you look stupid. Not asking is usually worse ...
ReplyDeleteSome things though you can avoid to ask by telling people things instead. "Prof, I want to talk to you about the funding. If we get the funding, we should perhaps start planning experiments/students/volunteers/..." or "I am working very hard on this paper now because when my contract ends in July I won't have the facilities to keep working on it (HINT)".
Or just get very angry and yell that you are tired of all the vagueness... I did that towards the end of my PhD (because you have nothing to lose by then) and prof became suddenly very aware of me and my troubles ;)
Good luck!